122 IOWA DEiPARTMBNT OF AGRICIILTTTRE 



piled ti roLiort oT tho county and district, fairs of the state (they will be 

 here for those who wish a copy) and I think yon will find that 1916 was 

 a splendid year for the county and district fairs of Iowa. There are sev- 

 eral things to which you can attribute the successes of the past year, but 

 the most important, in my estimation, is the financial aid and encourage- 

 ment that the state of Iowa has given. However, I will leave that sub- 

 ject for discussion by some one else later. 



The question assigned me is Games and Concessions. You know there 

 is nothing more important that the county fairs have to contend with 

 than games and concessions. I am sorry to say that in the past some 

 few fairs in the state of Iowa have been handicapped with respect to 

 aid from the state because of differences of opinion as to what constitutes 

 gambling games; but I am glad to say that this year not one complaint 

 has come to the department of agriculture in regard to gambling. Not 

 a single complaint! It is the first time in my experience, acting with 

 the secretary of the department of agriculture upon reports of the dif- 

 ferent county fairs, that there has not been a complaint. 



I am not going to speak upon the question as to what we do at the 

 Iowa State Fair in regard to games, but I am going to tell you what we 

 did when I w^as secretary, for sixteen years, of the county fair in Buena 

 Vista county. I never had any complaint of my games and concessions 

 for this reason: I was very careful what I allowed on the grounds. I 

 admit that you cannot run a county fair unless you use a lot of judg- 

 ment. It is like running any other business. You have to cater to many 

 different classes of people to make your county fair a success. I think the 

 little games of skill like the cane rack are just as essential to a county 

 fair as some other things. The average country boy would save up about 

 so much money for the county fair. He would do chores about the farm 

 in order to earn this money; then he would come to the fair and spend 

 his four or five dollars, and if he couldn't spend that money in his own 

 innocent way he would go away with the idea that the county fair was a 

 failure. 



The games that I allowed at the county fair for years were those not 

 used for gambling. Anything pertaining to a gambling proposition was 

 not permitted. If the concessioner had a paddle wheel I would investigate 

 his proposition, and if there was any chance that he could start a gam- 

 bling game as soon as our backs were turned (you know those fellows take 

 advantage of you if they can), I would turn him down. These men come 

 to you with a straight face and say they have an honest game with no 

 gambling about it. When you go over the grounds on Tuesday looking 

 things over they are waiting around with their little games, but when 

 Thursday comes, the day with eight or ten thousand people on the ground 

 and the day when you are too busy to look around, they get out their 

 outfits and try to make a cleaning. Our object always is not to allow a 

 man to start games of that kind on those days, and if they do we fire them. 



Take the innocent game of a knife rack or a doll rack. I think they 

 are just as essential to amuse young fellows as many other games and 

 exhibits. Yet it is said they are gambling games. Now, as I said before. 



